ender4

21 hours ago, Made In Aston said:

It sounds worse than it is. Wages have been covered for this season and next by the Qatar club. We just have to sell him after that or loan him out again for the remaining 12 months.

I doubt full wages have been covered. Maybe like 75% of wages, or maybe 50% of wages and a loan fee. 

We also don't know if the second year is an 'option' for the Qatari club to choose to activate. Nowhere was it reported as a fixed 2 year loan deal.

6 hours ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Oh look, an interesting thing has emerged

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/may/01/birmingham-city-council-accused-of-making-cuts-based-on-imagined-data

That's not even the worst bit. The worst part is that no-one at BCC can actually say how much money came in last year, how much money was paid out last year, and how much money they currently have in their bank accounts.  Not even sure how this is possible, but that's where they currently are at.

Quote

Tilsley said: “It is so bad that if I was to ask our director of finance: ‘How much money have we got in the bank today?’ nobody would be able to tell me. We’ve lost complete control over the financial management.”

5 hours ago, sidcow said:

 

Thing is, I don't understand why they need their own records for  calculation.  Surely they have X number of claimants who have come forwards?  Surely those claimants have to provide some kind of evidence of their employment and earning?  

The £760 million is what they are guessing they might pay out once everyone does come forward. They have no idea how many people that might be, nor how much each person might be entitled to.

14 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

So in a desperate bid to make it look like their policy of forcibly detaining people and sending them to Rwanda at a cost of more than a million quid a head, they've had the cracking idea of getting the first bloke on a plane by, erm...offering him 3 grand to piss off.

Hasn't it so far cost £0.5 BILLION per person? Sorry, i actually mean £500,000,000 + £3,000 = £500,003,000 per person.

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Someone has posted on skyscrapercity:

"Some sort of cryptic SM post today from Gabby Agbonlahor about filming a video for the club and saying exciting plans for the future and "the stadium is in good hands". I'd expect some sort of stadium update with this video"

What is skyscraper city?

2 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Just a general query out of interest, what made you want a season ticket 3-4 years ago and not before when they were easy to get?  I assume the availability of tickets when you want before put you off getting a season ticket whereas now it’s harder to get a GA ticket?

Follow up question to that, if we did build a 60k+ stadium and GA tickets were easily attainable any time would you go back to getting GA tickets when you want or would you still want a season ticket?

Good question. We were awful for a decade and basically lost every time I attended a match in the Premier League. I had no interest in attending many matches in the Championship.

What changed? I’m not sure. The interest in Premier League football after being in the Championship, Villa doing better rather than circling the drain and the optimism around that, lots of mates who all suddenly wanted to attend matches as well, post Covid wanting to make the most of live events rather than watching on TV, kids who also wanted to attend some matches, likeable players. Maybe a little of that PL football is an event nowadays that everyone wants to be at?

If we had easily available tickets in a 60k stadium, I’d still want the season ticket as I’ve now caught the bug of seeing Villa live. It’s also a cost saving compared to me having to spend £63/£50 a ticket this season. It would mean upping my attendance from 10-12 matches a season to 19 games.

2 hours ago, Mazrim said:

Right, I see.
In my own experience,  I know a lot of people who are members - purely because its the only way to get tickets, but on on the waiting list. Many of these are parents of kids who want to go and so they go too. May mates who are season ticket holders now have multiple kids who want season tickets, so yes they would be those who are members but want season tickets. My own extended family are mostly members who are happy to go to half the matches, a few existing season ticket holders.

I dont see why my experience would be unusual, therefore I reckon there's some who are member who are on the waiting list, but many more who are not. Like, maybe 10/90 split.
I hear from the club that there's over 35k on the waiting list. Now who knows how many follow through but most you'd think would or why bother?

There's no point go around the houses on this. You either think the demand is there for big crowds or you don't, but I do and I think the evidence supports it.

Yes agree. I have 8 memberships and 3 places on the season ticket waiting list. The 3 people go to most matches, the other 5 memberships are used to rotate between 20 people who all like to attend a few matches here and there. 
 

If we had a bigger ground with easy to get tickets, I think I could get 15 out of the 20 people to attend a lot of the matches.

2 hours ago, mrchnry said:

Next season will be 3 and a half seasons on the waiting list for me. Last year I went from in the 11 thousands to the 10 thousands. The demand is definitely there to fill 50k+ 

Similar here. When I joined the waiting list I was around 10,000th and over the 3-4 years I move closer by around 500 places per year.  That tells me that most people are taking up the chance of a season ticket when offered. 
 

44 minutes ago, AshVilla said:

Is that the sign to chop off their heads or their legs?  

12 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

For an outsider looking in its hard to explain how much of an island Newcastle is compared to us

For us lot who went to school with man utd and liverpool fans let alone baggies and wolves (Kidderminster 15 miles south of brum maybe 1 or 3 blue noses in a thousand kids) it's a no brainer what our problems are

The demographic of the city is also key, the roots aren't as deep for too many people in our catchment area 

Which is why we really could do with a ground where we can offer 5-8,000 tickets for free or at major discount to school kids, so they grow up Villa fans rather than Man Utd/Liverpool fans. 
 

They will also come with an adult and spend money on the ground and shop. 

42 minutes ago, nick76 said:

I get that we are doing well and football is immensely popular at the moment but I’m yet to be convinced that we have either 30,000 genuine season ticket waiting list people who would snap up a ticket if it was available now, maybe 10,000 tops or if they would be general sale that we would sell anywhere near 60k in the lower class premier league games especially midweek games.

Even if only 10,000 of our 35k+ waiting list actually took up the option of a season tickets, that takes our current attendance from 42k to 52k. Add in 2k extra hospitality and 1k extra away fans capacity, then we would already be averaging 55k for a rubbish category B game. 
 

Then we’d have lots of casual fans who would buy the extra 5k tickets that would be on general sale, even if that was only for the big 6 games, Wolves game and 4 CL games, that’s 50% of our games selling out a 60k stadium. 
 

The smaller games probably only attract an extra 2k casual fans and so attendance averages 57k for those games. 

1 hour ago, Avfc96 said:

The time for Qatar to 'invest' in an English football club has been and gone. They bought PSG 14 years ago with the intent of promoting the 2022 WC which they did and are now going the other way in terms of their investment with most of their high earners now gone and focusing on bringing through and signing younger players.

 

Maybe time for Iran, North Korea and Houthi rebels to put in a joint bid to buy Everton.  Should get passed the PL board just fine.

Lower Grounds tickets for this match is also sold out. Terrace View tickets still available.

26 minutes ago, Talldarkandransome said:

Aren't they the ones they normally block off cos of the advertising boards

I thought Europe has bigger boards so they can’t sell these seats for Euro matches?  

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

 In the same period we would be playing 10 CL level opponents, means more required from our best players and 4 more games. 

We wouldn't though.

We'd be playing four teams on par with Man City, Arsenal, Liverpool.  Two teams equal to a Spurs or Newcastle.  And 2 teams equal to a West Ham, Brighton, Wolves level. 

And we'd only need to win around three of those eight games to qualify for the play-off round. Four wins would put us mid-table and give us a decent chance of getting though the play-off round.

Four wins also pay an extra prize money of £10 million on top of the base CL money.

12 hours ago, fightoffyour said:

The crest stands out because it's baby blue (for some reason) on claret. The lion doesn't stand out on the badge because it's pale yellow (for some reason) on baby blue. It's just a smudge. The lion either needs to be claret on a blue background or gold on a claret background with a gold or blue trim so it stands out on the home shirt. This should be obvious to absolutely everybody - apart from Lerner and Heck apparently - and is absolutely fundamental to any Aston Villa crest design.

Exactly this. It's so simple yet no-one at Villa seems to understand the basic concept of contrasting colours.

So there is a pic of a kit doing the rounds on Reddit - someone took this photo of our ‘new kit’ being sold in a market in Turkey.   
 

A fake shirt of course, but the Turkish seller said it’s a copy of our new kit.

It’s Adidas, with the new badge and AU1500 scrawled in the middle.  If you ignore the rubbish badge and ignore the AU1500, it looks pretty decent.

Not sure if anyone can get it from Reddit and post it here?

3 hours ago, duke313 said:

They’ve transfer listed the whole team bar Mainoo, Garnacho and Hojlund

They should just swap 10 players with Chelsea. Win-win for both of them

7 minutes ago, Czarnikjak said:

The 85% cost control was voted in unanimously last week. Today's vote was for x5 anchor cap In Addition to cost control.

The 85% cost control was voted in for 2024/25. 

The anchor cap vote today was for 2025/26 onwards to replace the 85% cost control. 
 

Not one article is saying otherwise.

1 hour ago, wishywashy said:

This thread is under the impression that there won't be a 85% spending cap for Prem clubs, which The Times and The Athletic have both said will remain.

It’s funny that we both read the same articles and have interpreted it completely different.  
 

As far as I can tell, and I’m pretty confident that is what The Times and The Athletic are trying to say, is that this new fixed cap will REPLACE the 85% PSR limits. The key word there in both articles is the word “replace”.   
 

Of course, they might be wrong themselves, but that is what they are telling us.  In my interpretation of course.

20 minutes ago, viivvaa66 said:

Actually there are 36 teams, so 12 teams get knocked out.

Top 8 teams go directly into round of 16, where they are seeded. Teams 9 to 16 are drawn against teams 17 to 24 in a qualifying round before the winners are drawn against the top 8 teams.

I believe we could manage get into the top 16, that provides a good chance to get into the round of 16.

Oh yeah sorry, 36 not 32 teams.  Agree, we’d still hope to be mid-table.

6 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I want it too, but no way are we ready, I doubt we get out the group.

24 out of 32 teams get through the mega-group stage next season.  Only the 8 worst teams get knocked out, and most of those will be teams who have gone through qualifying rounds to even get to the group stage.

Id expect us to get through to the play-off round.

14 minutes ago, TRO said:

Are we ready for Champions league?.....missing out on the Europa, is a huge step up.

Don't get me wrong, I want to achieve it, but I wonder, if we are actually ready for it.

Yes definitely. Under the new 32 team league system, we are guaranteed 8 games.  Only 4 of those games should be against teams who are actually better than Villa.

We have a really good chance of finishing in a mid-table position, and a great chance of qualifying for the play-off round. In the play-off round, we should play a team of a similar quality to Villa, giving us a decent chance at the knock-out rounds.  
 

Of course, if we get to the knock-out rounds, we will be massively outgunned, but that’ll have been an amazing CL campaign by that point.
 

33 minutes ago, GlobalVillan said:

Yep. Maybe not £100m but certainly not cheap. Unless he decides to run his comtract down and pocket the "transfer fee" in increased wages.

Yeah that’s what makes most sense for Salah.

Take the £30m wages for this year.  
 

Then he’s a free agent, sign for a Saudi club next summer for a massive signing on fee and massive wages.

5 hours ago, duke313 said:

Have a look who their defensive set piece coach is 

Who?